As far as I'm concerned, these people can kiss my shiny white ass. Theft? You've GOT to be kidding me. When these stupid sons of bitches start to pay ME for wasted bandwidth, only then will I uninstall my pop-up software.
This is along the same route as those jerks that say that not watching television commercials is the same as stealing tv services. Bull. I pay nearly $50 a month for high-speed internet access, as long as I'm online within the constraints of my SERVICE PROVIDER and within the law, I can do whatever the hell I want. Screw em. If they don't like it, I'll take my business elsewhere.
Re:Battery Life? (really blows)
on
Real PDA Wristwatch
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Yea, according to their specs, battery life is like 4 days! The only good thing is that the batteries are Lithium-ion rechargable. They don't say how they are recharged, but according to the linked page, the watch has a USB port. So onw can assume you hook it up to your computer's USB port to recharge at night or something.
I had a cell phone for the past 7 years, most recently it was Sprint PCS and dropped all my service last July. I noticed that eventhough my usage was very low, the monthly fees were getting nuts. The customer service I had been getting was shotty at best (they double charged my credit card 3 times in a row), the quality of the connection was getting worse every month and the phones break all the time. I was much happier with cell service before all this digital service and fancy gizmos came out. I mean come on, who the hell needs to have call-waiting, voice mail and friggin games on their damned phone!? Aren't these things supposed to be an extension of your house / work phone? I picked up a pre-paid phone for emergencies and have had no problems with it at all. No extra bill, no extra fees and the quality of the connection isn't any worse than I'm used to. Hell, most of the time I'll just make a call from a pay-phone. Much easier and the signal doesn't drop out.
I'm not a fan of Windows at all. In fact if MS somehow fell flat on it's face and died I wouldn't shed a tear. However, since that's not a reality, unfortunetely I need to stick with Windows. Reasons? Well, there are quite a few...
1- Driver support. Yea, I know there's a ton of drivers available for Linux, but in the real world, they're limited. For instance, my USB scanner refuses to work with ANY form of Linux at all.
2- Software support. Specifically Macromedia software. I'm a Web Developer and use Dreamweaver exclusively with bits in Flash. Yea, I know there's a lot of Open Source / GPL / whatever software out there, but be honest, how much of it can compare with Dreamweaver? I won't go into specifics, but if you use Dreamweaver, you know what I'm talking about.
3- All the servers at work, unfortunetely, are Windows machines with both the Intranet and Internet sites using ASP. I have no real feasable choice in the matter, it was that way when I was hired. I would love to have the time to migrate everything over to Linux and use Cold Fusion, but that's not a reality. There's far too much to do this in any acceptable time frame.
There's more, but those are the top 3. IF Macromedia would release a *native* version of Flash & Dreamweaver, I would seriously consider switching over. Yea, I know, "use Wine / Open Office / XWine". That's not a reliable alternative. I have in fact tried to get Dreamweaver running on those with various levels of success. However, eventhough I got it installed and actually running, it's not stable enough for any serious work. I couldn't even get Flash running at all. VMWare? Too slow and I'm still running Windows eventhough it's in a virtual machine. Same with Win4Lin. Not stable or fast enough for my needs.
I have however begun teaching my kids how to run Linux and about the power of Open Source software and have a Linux box for them to play with. They won't adopt that machine very easilly though as it can't run 1/2 the games they have for their Windows box.
When software and hardware companies finally get with the program and start releasing stuff for Linux, THAT'S when Linux will start to dominate.
I mean, seriously, what's the point of such a high clock rate? Given, the "virtual dual processor" is pretty cool in my book, but aside from that, why bother running so high when the fastest bus speed I've ever seen on a mainboard is 533MHz? Not only that, you're still severely limited by the bulk storage whether it's a hard drive or cd-rom. I'm using a P3 600 at home and a P4 1.8GHz at work, both with win2k Pro and there really isn't too much of a difference between the two. Hell, I'd much rather have a system with a 1GHz CPU on a 1GHz FSB MB.
You've GOT to be kidding. DVD's that self-destruct after 8 hours then you throw them away!?!? Will the discs be cheaper because of this? I mean why the hell would I pay full price for something that is designed to fail shortly after I watch / listen to it!? Jesus, think about the enviornmental issues associated with this. A substrate that reacts with air. Uh huh. What's the by-product of this reaction?
First BMI is releasing crippled CD's, now the powers that be are thinking about self-destructing discs. What's next? Are we going to have to call someone whenever we view it so they can charge a "usage fee"!?!?!?!?
I agree. Historically IBM's marketing is just short of non-existant on products such as this. I also recall those flippy laptops and they really seemed pretty cool to me and those NCR's are still very cool. Remember OS/2? I purchased Warp 3 back in the day and ran it for quite some time. Far superior to the offerings from Redmond at the time, faster, more stable, sleaker and just better. Imagine if OS/2 was marketed like Windows was! IBM would have driven MS out of business!
More expensive? Are you friggin nuts!? I don't know about anyone else here, but where I live (Central New York State - no not NYC), the heating costs alone are a killer. Durring the "heating" months (about mid Oct through mid April), the gas company destroys me. Between Dec and Feb, my electric heating costs averages $250 a month!
Yes, you are correct in that energy excesses are destroying the enviornmnet, but let's not put all the blame on the consumer. The biggest problem is that of the energy supplier themselves along with factories that are still using their antiquated generators plus the government not investing enough in new sources of energy. Given the chance, I would hop off this catch-22 and install renewable or at least more energy efficient energy sources. The problem is that it would cost me more money than I'll ever see.
I agree. Why manage multiple machines when you can use centralized management? You won't need very powerfull systems as the terminal so it'll cut costs and allow you to install a beefy server with the savings on the workstations. No HDD, no FDD - throw a boot rom in an ethernet card and slap it on the network...
"However, if they come even one color short then this technology is completely us"
I disagree. There could be many applications that it could be used for WITHOUT color - think greyscale. Maybe the ultimate eBook? How many people out there have Palm's with a greyscale screen?
Gotta PII 400 kickin around? I'll give you a quarter for it... Hell, I'll even pay the shipping... Those older chips aren't worthless. Believe me. My brother is working just fine on his PII 400, my parents are using a P-233, and an uncle a Celeron 366. Hell, I'm happy with my PIII 600.
Uses: X-Terminal box, MP3 server, nearly any "office" apps as long as they aren't bloatware, um - Linux works fine...
I'm not too familiar with unions, but from what I do know, a Tech union would NOT be a good idea. I saw it mentioned before, but can't find it again (or else I'd post it there), but a Guild would be more appropriate for us Geeks, similar to electricians or plummers. There's too many IT workers that free-lance or are consultants and don't work for a large organization where a union would make more sence. That's just my opinion, I may be off-base about it, but there it is.
We've all heard this story a few times before. So what? I'm glad that Slashdot is running this story many times. In fact, I think it should become a regular feature or something.
Think of it like this... If scum like this are successfull in their law suits, where the hell will people like you or me do with the Internet? IMHO the foundation of the Internet will collapse without ecommerce!
Web Developers out of a job
Tech companies folding because they aren't selling hardware to run ecommerce sites
Web based businesses folding since they can't pay the extorsion to PanIP
Come on people. I've been in a legal battle before where I was the small gun and lost nearly everything, I can see where this can go. THIS is the News That Matters. Period.
I don't get it. M$ is telling people that people can't modify something that they own? Christ, that would be the same logic as Chevrolet telling me that I can't put a new engine in my car or Dell telling me I can't put any aftermarket software or hardware on my system.
I say to hell with them anyway. As far as I'm concerned, the x-box is a crappy knockoff of the real consoles.
There's a lot of resources out there that have many tutorials and schematics to build robots. Some are just phototropic in the sence that they always "go to the light", some run away from light, some run around like an insect avoiding things with IR detection, sonar and the like. If you have a relatively steady hand for soldering and can read a schematic, you can find plans to buid robots ranging from the basic phototropic to autonomus robots that have voice recognition. It all depends on your expertize, experience and how much cash you're willing to spend.
Goto http://www.robohoo.com/ for a Yahoo like directory of resources available.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as I'm concerned, these people can kiss my shiny white ass. Theft? You've GOT to be kidding me. When these stupid sons of bitches start to pay ME for wasted bandwidth, only then will I uninstall my pop-up software.
This is along the same route as those jerks that say that not watching television commercials is the same as stealing tv services. Bull. I pay nearly $50 a month for high-speed internet access, as long as I'm online within the constraints of my SERVICE PROVIDER and within the law, I can do whatever the hell I want. Screw em. If they don't like it, I'll take my business elsewhere.
He did...
Penguin
Or is your poison BSD?
Yea, according to their specs, battery life is like 4 days! The only good thing is that the batteries are Lithium-ion rechargable. They don't say how they are recharged, but according to the linked page, the watch has a USB port. So onw can assume you hook it up to your computer's USB port to recharge at night or something.
I had a cell phone for the past 7 years, most recently it was Sprint PCS and dropped all my service last July. I noticed that eventhough my usage was very low, the monthly fees were getting nuts. The customer service I had been getting was shotty at best (they double charged my credit card 3 times in a row), the quality of the connection was getting worse every month and the phones break all the time. I was much happier with cell service before all this digital service and fancy gizmos came out. I mean come on, who the hell needs to have call-waiting, voice mail and friggin games on their damned phone!? Aren't these things supposed to be an extension of your house / work phone? I picked up a pre-paid phone for emergencies and have had no problems with it at all. No extra bill, no extra fees and the quality of the connection isn't any worse than I'm used to. Hell, most of the time I'll just make a call from a pay-phone. Much easier and the signal doesn't drop out.
I'm not a fan of Windows at all. In fact if MS somehow fell flat on it's face and died I wouldn't shed a tear. However, since that's not a reality, unfortunetely I need to stick with Windows. Reasons? Well, there are quite a few...
1- Driver support. Yea, I know there's a ton of drivers available for Linux, but in the real world, they're limited. For instance, my USB scanner refuses to work with ANY form of Linux at all.
2- Software support. Specifically Macromedia software. I'm a Web Developer and use Dreamweaver exclusively with bits in Flash. Yea, I know there's a lot of Open Source / GPL / whatever software out there, but be honest, how much of it can compare with Dreamweaver? I won't go into specifics, but if you use Dreamweaver, you know what I'm talking about.
3- All the servers at work, unfortunetely, are Windows machines with both the Intranet and Internet sites using ASP. I have no real feasable choice in the matter, it was that way when I was hired. I would love to have the time to migrate everything over to Linux and use Cold Fusion, but that's not a reality. There's far too much to do this in any acceptable time frame.
There's more, but those are the top 3. IF Macromedia would release a *native* version of Flash & Dreamweaver, I would seriously consider switching over. Yea, I know, "use Wine / Open Office / XWine". That's not a reliable alternative. I have in fact tried to get Dreamweaver running on those with various levels of success. However, eventhough I got it installed and actually running, it's not stable enough for any serious work. I couldn't even get Flash running at all. VMWare? Too slow and I'm still running Windows eventhough it's in a virtual machine. Same with Win4Lin. Not stable or fast enough for my needs.
I have however begun teaching my kids how to run Linux and about the power of Open Source software and have a Linux box for them to play with. They won't adopt that machine very easilly though as it can't run 1/2 the games they have for their Windows box.
When software and hardware companies finally get with the program and start releasing stuff for Linux, THAT'S when Linux will start to dominate.
I mean, seriously, what's the point of such a high clock rate? Given, the "virtual dual processor" is pretty cool in my book, but aside from that, why bother running so high when the fastest bus speed I've ever seen on a mainboard is 533MHz? Not only that, you're still severely limited by the bulk storage whether it's a hard drive or cd-rom. I'm using a P3 600 at home and a P4 1.8GHz at work, both with win2k Pro and there really isn't too much of a difference between the two. Hell, I'd much rather have a system with a 1GHz CPU on a 1GHz FSB MB.
You've GOT to be kidding. DVD's that self-destruct after 8 hours then you throw them away!?!? Will the discs be cheaper because of this? I mean why the hell would I pay full price for something that is designed to fail shortly after I watch / listen to it!? Jesus, think about the enviornmental issues associated with this. A substrate that reacts with air. Uh huh. What's the by-product of this reaction?
First BMI is releasing crippled CD's, now the powers that be are thinking about self-destructing discs. What's next? Are we going to have to call someone whenever we view it so they can charge a "usage fee"!?!?!?!?
I agree. Historically IBM's marketing is just short of non-existant on products such as this. I also recall those flippy laptops and they really seemed pretty cool to me and those NCR's are still very cool. Remember OS/2? I purchased Warp 3 back in the day and ran it for quite some time. Far superior to the offerings from Redmond at the time, faster, more stable, sleaker and just better. Imagine if OS/2 was marketed like Windows was! IBM would have driven MS out of business!
That should be electric AND heating costs...
More expensive? Are you friggin nuts!? I don't know about anyone else here, but where I live (Central New York State - no not NYC), the heating costs alone are a killer. Durring the "heating" months (about mid Oct through mid April), the gas company destroys me. Between Dec and Feb, my electric heating costs averages $250 a month!
Yes, you are correct in that energy excesses are destroying the enviornmnet, but let's not put all the blame on the consumer. The biggest problem is that of the energy supplier themselves along with factories that are still using their antiquated generators plus the government not investing enough in new sources of energy. Given the chance, I would hop off this catch-22 and install renewable or at least more energy efficient energy sources. The problem is that it would cost me more money than I'll ever see.
Another gaget that's small enough for me to lose
I agree. Why manage multiple machines when you can use centralized management? You won't need very powerfull systems as the terminal so it'll cut costs and allow you to install a beefy server with the savings on the workstations. No HDD, no FDD - throw a boot rom in an ethernet card and slap it on the network...
"However, if they come even one color short then this technology is completely us"
I disagree. There could be many applications that it could be used for WITHOUT color - think greyscale. Maybe the ultimate eBook? How many people out there have Palm's with a greyscale screen?
Um, well duh.
Gotta PII 400 kickin around? I'll give you a quarter for it... Hell, I'll even pay the shipping... Those older chips aren't worthless. Believe me. My brother is working just fine on his PII 400, my parents are using a P-233, and an uncle a Celeron 366. Hell, I'm happy with my PIII 600.
Uses: X-Terminal box, MP3 server, nearly any "office" apps as long as they aren't bloatware, um - Linux works fine...
I'm not too familiar with unions, but from what I do know, a Tech union would NOT be a good idea. I saw it mentioned before, but can't find it again (or else I'd post it there), but a Guild would be more appropriate for us Geeks, similar to electricians or plummers. There's too many IT workers that free-lance or are consultants and don't work for a large organization where a union would make more sence. That's just my opinion, I may be off-base about it, but there it is.
Insect Robots: the "Replicators".
Little grey dudes: the Asgard
Think of it like this... If scum like this are successfull in their law suits, where the hell will people like you or me do with the Internet? IMHO the foundation of the Internet will collapse without ecommerce!
Web Developers out of a job
Tech companies folding because they aren't selling hardware to run ecommerce sites
Web based businesses folding since they can't pay the extorsion to PanIP
Come on people. I've been in a legal battle before where I was the small gun and lost nearly everything, I can see where this can go. THIS is the News That Matters. Period.
I don't get it. M$ is telling people that people can't modify something that they own? Christ, that would be the same logic as Chevrolet telling me that I can't put a new engine in my car or Dell telling me I can't put any aftermarket software or hardware on my system.
:)
I say to hell with them anyway. As far as I'm concerned, the x-box is a crappy knockoff of the real consoles.
Long live the Atari 2600!
Just to correct you, I just bought 2 GameBoy Advnace systems for my kids the other day at Walmart. They've been in my area for at least a week or so.
Somewhat interesting. I wonder if when this piece of code matures, we will be able to run a non-windows GUI.
Already half way there...
http://www.peoplesgas.com/etrc/ETGastrobot.html
They already are out on the lawns! Check this out...
http://www.robotics.com/robomenu/yardbot2.html
Try going to http://www.robohoo.com for a Yahoo like directory of robots and projects...
There's a lot of resources out there that have many tutorials and schematics to build robots. Some are just phototropic in the sence that they always "go to the light", some run away from light, some run around like an insect avoiding things with IR detection, sonar and the like. If you have a relatively steady hand for soldering and can read a schematic, you can find plans to buid robots ranging from the basic phototropic to autonomus robots that have voice recognition. It all depends on your expertize, experience and how much cash you're willing to spend.
Goto http://www.robohoo.com/ for a Yahoo like directory of resources available.